Build Own Gaming Pc

[Bryan83]

Hi am new to this my son has just asked for a gaming pc for Xmas he is 11 and currently plays ps4 the usual fortnite , fifa ,cod. I am looking to build something that will support these type of games and have the ability to be upgraded as time goes by.

I am looking to spend about £600 on the pc. will buy a monitor and stuff to help get him up and running.

If anyone can't point me in the right direction would rather go custom build or am I better to buy a pre built system.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Raised_by_Penguins]

Hi Bryan83.
I was asking a similar question for my son back in the summer. He's 12 and also looking to migrate to a desktop (has been playing on a PS4 and an under-powered laptop) for Apex and Fortnite. The advice I got was good, and my conclusion was that building one yourself might save some money, but then you lose out on overall Warranty. Also, buying from a reputable specialist, you have peace of mind that the components selected are a good match.

I was recommended this for £730 as a rough minimum spec, though it's over budget and has been out of stock for a while:
AlphaSync Ryzen 5 8GB RAM 1TB HDD 240GB SSD Radeon 580 Gaming Desktop PC

You could see how much it costs to source all those components yourself to get the costs down, though from what I've seen this may be difficult. You can see all the useful advice I got on this thread: https://forums.pcgamer.com/threads/new-gaming-pc-for-son.4238/

Hope this helps.

 

[Zoid]

Hi am new to this my son has just asked for a gaming pc for Xmas he is 11 and currently plays ps4 the usual fortnite , fifa ,cod. I am looking to build something that will support these type of games and have the ability to be upgraded as time goes by.

I am looking to spend about £600 on the pc. will buy a monitor and stuff to help get him up and running.

If anyone can't point me in the right direction would rather go custom build or am I better to buy a pre built system.


Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forums!

At your pricepoint it's hard to nail down a definative "best" configuration as it is constantly in flux depending on availability and sales. However, I think at this time, something like this would be a good baseline to go off of:

PCPartPicker Part List

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£93.98 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£61.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£58.00 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card (£199.79 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.99 @ Currys PC World)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£75.37 @ More Computers)
Total: £629.11
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-22 21:45 BST+0100

The Ryzen 3 3300X is the king of budget gaming processors at the moment, but it is having availability issues right now and spiking in price. The Ryzen 3 3100 is just marginally slower but a much better deal. Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000 series) is releasing soon, but I don't expect we'll have a sub-£100 offering soon, so the R3 3100 is still my pick for now.

16GB of RAM will cover you on any modern games, a 1TB SSD will give you enough fast storage for several large game installs, and the GTX 1660 is a good 1080p card at a sane price.

Since you're planning this as a Christmas gift though, you'll want to keep an eye on the market. We have a lot of new hardware coming out between now and then, and although it will mostly be the mid-higher range stuff, we might see a surprise, or we might see good holiday closeout deals on outgoing hardware.

 

[Bryan83]

Welcome to the forums!

At your pricepoint it's hard to nail down a definative "best" configuration as it is constantly in flux depending on availability and sales. However, I think at this time, something like this would be a good baseline to go off of:

PCPartPicker Part List

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£93.98 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£61.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£58.00 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card (£199.79 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.99 @ Currys PC World)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£75.37 @ More Computers)
Total: £629.11
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-22 21:45 BST+0100

The Ryzen 3 3300X is the king of budget gaming processors at the moment, but it is having availability issues right now and spiking in price. The Ryzen 3 3100 is just marginally slower but a much better deal. Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000 series) is releasing soon, but I don't expect we'll have a sub-£100 offering soon, so the R3 3100 is still my pick for now.

16GB of RAM will cover you on any modern games, a 1TB SSD will give you enough fast storage for several large game installs, and the GTX 1660 is a good 1080p card at a sane price.

Since you're planning this as a Christmas gift though, you'll want to keep an eye on the market. We have a lot of new hardware coming out between now and then, and although it will mostly be the mid-higher range stuff, we might see a surprise, or we might see good holiday closeout deals on outgoing hardware.

Hi would the MSI B450 A-Pro Max with AMD Ryzen 5 3400G AM4 be a better option just pushing the budget a little bit more.

Some parts not in stock so prices are up and down

Thanks

Bryan

 

[Zoid]

Hi would the MSI B450 A-Pro Max with AMD Ryzen 5 3400G AM4 be a better option just pushing the budget a little bit more.

Some parts not in stock so prices are up and down

Thanks

Bryan

Parts coming in and out of stock and prices constantly fluctuating is a definite reality in this very competitive price point, especially while we experience supply chain weirdness due to the pandemic.

The Ryzen 5 3400G actually isn't an upgrade over the Ryzen 3 3100. In fact, it would perform worse in most games, and that's because of the "G" at the end of its name. Ryzen processors with a "G" at the end are APUs with Vega graphics built in. They're the best performing integrated graphics processors out there, but that doesn't matter in a system with a dedicated GPU. Since the processing cores are just Zen+ instead of Zen 2 cores, the raw CPU performance will actually be lower than the Ryzen 3 3100.

I'm seeing the Ryzen 5 3400G listed at around £125 right now. For that price you'd be better off buying an older Ryzen 5 2600 or a Ryzen 3 3300X if you can fine one. As you start moving up into the £100 + price range, a lot of options start to come available, but make sure you don't take that extra money out of the GPU budget. The GPU is going to have a bigger impact on gaming performance than the CPU.